Flip the absolute phase of a CD/Album

I recently upgraded to a Schiit Yggdrasil. One of its features is a phase button that flips the phase. The argument runs that an awful lot of CD’s get produced with the wrong phase. My subjective listening confirms this. Thus far I’ve tagged 119 albums as being correct and 82 as wrong and 7 that I could not tell. It would be really kool if Roon could read the tags and and then apply the correct phase rather than having to use the Yggy’s switch. This would be of great benefit to users that don’t have a Yggy or other means for manually changing the phase.

I also wonder whether Roon might be able to crowd source a database of my and other peoples subjective experience of phase to create an objective measure of phase that could then be integrated into Roon (and other players?)

Cheers, Geoff

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My integrated amp has this feature as well. It’s useful to check certain recordings.

I doubt such database exists. You can invert phase within Roon using the DSP fonction. “Speaker configuration”. If you define a preset “INVERT PHASE” you can toggle on the fly.

Cool, so DSP selection based on tags could be a useful feature.

My Devialet amp has this. The remote even has a button called ‘invert’. I use it a lot. But the invert function in Roon is also good. I once asked the Roon guys for an option to place an invert toggle on the 'playing screens, but that has not happened. @alec_eiffel, can you please tell us how you create the ‘invert’ preset?

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Yes, I too doubt such a DB exists, that’s why I suggested crowd sourcing one :slight_smile: I too would be interested in knowing how to create a preset to do this (I can see how to do this continuously via the speaker setup in the DSP, but haven’t come across how to change this on the fly).

Open DSP engine.
Enable DSP engine.
Open Speaker setup.
Enable Speaker setup.
Invert phase for all channels --> Yes
DSP Preset / Save Preset / give a name such as “INVERT PHASE”
Additionally create a preset for “NORMAL PHASE” with the setting “No” under Invert phase for all channels.
Both presets can be activated easily on the fly (not possible on phones, only tablets or PC/MAC).

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A toggle on the playback stream would be a useful enhancement, right alongside all the other playback controls rather than only on the now playing screen.

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Yes, that was my request I believe.
I did write ’ screens’ in plural so I meant all the play interfaces :slight_smile:. Would be a very useful feature. Only potential trouble I can see is if one uses long buffers. If playback is on a RAAT device I guess it might be possible to flush the buffer and send a new inverted stream, but for other devices one might have to wait for the inverted stream to start.

Hi @Geoffrey_Binder,

As a first step towards a crowdsourced database of phase, let’s hoist this thread up the flagpole in Music/Albums and see who salutes !

Can a person not just use software and permanently fix the phase issue in a copy of the digital files?

Sure @DrTone, but it could potentially be a lot of work. My library is small. I’d still have to fix 60-80 albums, maybe more. What about those with a Tidal subscription? Ask Tidal to flip the phase of x number of files? Wouldn’t work…
As long as I have my Devialet amp it is not a problem, but if I change to Phantoms or a different brand all together it could certainly be…

Sorry, I was actually asking for myself. I don’t think my Daw of choice has that option. Presonus Studio One.

If it’s an album I enjoy I’ll go through the trouble.

I’ve never heard of this before. What does an out of phase recording sound like? How does one know?

A lack or reduction in bass is the biggest tell. You might not realize it, unless you played with reversing phase for a particular CD. As @ogs mentioned it’s easy to do on the Devialet via it’s remote. Schiit DACs have a get off your butt button to do it.

Thanks Alec, but looks like more trouble than it’s worth. My use of tags in Roon immediately lets me know of my earlier subjective decision and I just then need to push the button on the dac. What I’m looking for is some sort of automation that could be built into Roon so that there’d be no need for action every time a new track was played…

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Yes, and once you’re familiar with checking for phase other things become more noticeable. better resolution of the sound stage (more forward when correct), greater solidity of individual voices (including instruments), overall, a greater sharpness/focus (less extraneous artifacts (“ahhh! so that’s what that sound was supposed to be”)

3292 albums and growing, hence my “need” for a better solution than my current subjective practice :frowning:

I have never tried this myself, but my hardware has the capability.

Could somebody list a few albums that are wrong, so we can experiment and educate ourselves?

I imagine this would also not apply to all releases of an album?